Posted on 05/10/2017 8:18:24 PM PDT by Lorianne
audio 9:18
Trump considering sending 3,000 to 5,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.
The new plan, which still needs the approval of the president, calls for expanding the U.S. military role as part of a broader effort to push an increasingly confident and resurgent Taliban back to the negotiating table, U.S. officials said.
The plan comes at the end of a sweeping policy review built around the president’s desire to reverse worsening security in Afghanistan and “start winning” again, said one U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The new strategy, which has the backing of top Cabinet officials, would authorize the Pentagon, not the White House, to set troop numbers in Afghanistan and give the military far broader authority to use airstrikes to target Taliban militants. It would also lift Obama-era restrictions that limited the mobility of U.S. military advisers on the battlefield.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-poised-to-expand-military-effort-against-taliban-in-afghanistan/2017/05/08/356c4930-33fa-11e7-b412-62beef8121f7_story.html?utm_term=.ece7af22b09d
Dear Lord, No. No. No.
Taliban back to the table?? WTF!!!!! Those A$$¶0¦£$ should all be long dead by now.
This worthless hell hole is not worth one drop of American blood, or any Christian blood from any country. Leave now and leave it alone to remain in the seventh century; we have sent enough money and spilled enough blood.
Hey, we are on the verge of winning there. We killed a big leader just last week!
We’re going to get out sooner or later. It’s best to make it sooner with no additional blood or treasure spent on that hell hole.
Taliban, ISIS, HAMAS. The names matter not. The ME will chew us up no matter what we do. If Trump goes along with this he is doing the World Bank’s bidding. Let the Taliban win. They will just end up fighting some other wackjob bunch of muslims. That’s what they do.
We killed a lot of ISIS/ALQaeda and Taliban leaders/subleaders last week. That is going to hurt since they included a “governor” of Helmand Province, the ISIS leaders for it, and some Taliban leaders in several provinces.
Our intelligence is getting better and our missiles more accurate.
That, in my book, is a major PLUS, plus the ROE’s have been changed with the giving of the ground commanders more authority to rewrite the ROE’s to fit their particular situations.
Obama’s hand-behind-the-back treason/ROE is being reversed pretty quickly. Wish that had happened in Nam.
After 16 years of war, more than 2,200 service members killed, and more than 20,000 wounded, and we’ve spent almost $1 trillion to get us to your “verge of winning”.
Don’t send me any invites to the victory party.
Semper fi Cpls. Schmidt, Stacey and Boyd.
You never hear of sarcasm or something? ***Of course*** we aren’t on the verge of winning. It’s 16 years in, and if we leave, it’ll take about a week for the Taliban to take back over.
The idiots in DC and the Generals keep pretending it’s possible to make a difference there. The truth is that the war is designed to spend about 12 billion a year, and nothing else. Good Marines are being wasted there.
This is no longer protecting us from the next 9/11.
It’s not possible to defeat the Taliban or ISIS because they are Islam. Unless Islam is destroyed, then nothing else the US does matters. Another group will spring up with a different name, but it’s all Islam. The real threat is that we have brought Muslims here.
Ban Islam, deport Muslims, bring US troops home and put on our borders, institute a “pet the pig” requirement to board a plane on enter a western nation. Let the Muslim sects kill each other in their own rotten countries. Get US out! No more fighting for any Muslim sect, because they all hate us.
You’re simply delusional. No change in ROE, no better intel, no increase in missile accuracy, no increase of troop levels, no new “kill” in the whack a mole game will make Afghanistan into a normal functioning nation.
This war is designed to be permanent and to funnel money to the chosen ones. There is no “victory” possible there. This war has already lasted 4 times as long as WWII, and we are no closer to a “win” than 6 months after we went there.
We are actually fighting enemies who were infants when the war began. We could stay another 16 years and it would be no different than today.
Who wants to be the last to die for a mistake?
but at least our allies are getting heroin production back to normal levels
My apologies. That “war” is personal and I’m a bit too grouchy to see any humor in it anymore.
Problem is not Afghanistan, its Pakistan. They are sending foot soldiers and weapons to Afghanistan paid by our tax money as AID.
There are many definitions of winning. Most don’t apply to Afghanistan which is not really a nation, but a series of cities and small towns in a land called “Afghanistan. They are united in only a couple things - producing heroin as a cash crop; tribal and/or religious cult ruling and competing groups; many wanting to live in the 18th century, and a few more modern people who actually want an education, an end for female genital mutilation, for religious tolerance, an end to the fighting, no Islamic extremist domination, and a real peace.
If there is any country that can be designed not only a “failed state” but a religious extremist shithole, it is Afghanistan and they carry a curse that is both ancient and deadly.
The best we can do is to try and cripple the leadership of the worst groups and bring the survivors to a conference table where the country can be divided up among the contestants.
We had a successful program going on like that in Iraq until Obama surrendered and took out stabilizing forces out.
Afghanistan is much worse but to abandon them now would be like what the Democrats did to Cambodia and Laos, not to mention SVN, in 1973-75. And you know how many decent people were murdered in the ensuing Communist genocide and slave labor camps.
We need to unleash our air force on the Taliban and Haqanni network, reducing their strongholds to dust regardless of civilian casualties. Then, and only then, is there a slight chance of some kind of peace coming to that poor country.
If we were to follow your advise, the extremist Moslems, just by sheer numbers, would overrun much of Asia Minor and the Malay Peninsula, including Indonesia, Borneo, all of Afghanistan, Iraq, (Iran is in the bucket right now), Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen/Oman, Somalia (perhaps), parts of Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, (Libya is already partially conquered), Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, a good part of Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Congo(s), and even parts of So. Africa, etc.
You think things are bad now. Just you wait.
Israel would probably be destroyed but not before taking out some Islamic extremist countries (Iran, Syria, Lebanon, etc.
Europe would be next for dinner. How long do you think the fops of England and France would last? Germany is in the toilet with 7 million Turks along living and working there. Italy is pretty much gone, as in the old Yugoslavia, Greece being next on the list, Spain (who knows), the same for Portugal.
Russia would nuke their extremists and then take over the rest of Ukraine/Crimea, the Baltic States and probably much of Poland. Hungary, I don’t know about. Czech states - probably would be gone soon.
Maybe Scandinavia could hold on if they unit but the enemy is within in Sweden and Denmark.
Then we would be next thru terrorist groups now existent in Latin America.
I don’t like the way this is going to end, if we don’t stop the bastards now, and over there.
Ok, lets have an outline of a plan that will “stop the bastards over there” with a price tag that US voters will pay.
There is no way to stop the bastards there because they are all bastards. Short of killing every Muslim (not going to happen; people already wring their hands about collateral damage), there is no end to Muslim extremeism. Islam is extreme whether they call themselves ISIS or Taliban or whatever.
If Europe won’t defend itself, then it’s not worth saving and we couldn’t do it anyway. The Middle East is a lost cause, and I’m sick of fighting Israel’s wars.
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